


wish someone would tell me who to be (ready to try anything)

by Adanska



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Genderfuck, Rule 63, Time Travel, always a girl!Marty, time travel troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adanska/pseuds/Adanska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(“Fashion cycle,” Doc had explained, looking more ‘50s than anything else. “The Eighties just came back around in a big way for kids your age, you shouldn’t stick out too much—people will just think you’re hipsters.” “What, like the <em>pants?</em>” “No, a nostalgia-obsessed movement—ah, nevermind.”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	wish someone would tell me who to be (ready to try anything)

2015 didn’t look that different; a part of Jennifer was disappointed, the part that wasn’t clutching Marcy’s hand tight in hers as the Doc briefed them on the situation. The fashions were different, jeans slung much lower and shirts much tighter, but so much of it felt like the styles she knew that it just felt disquieting.

(“Fashion cycle,” Doc had explained, looking more ‘50s than anything else. “The Eighties just came back around in a big way for kids your age, you shouldn’t stick out too much--people will just think you’re hipsters.” “What, like the _pants_?” “No, a nostalgia-obsessed movement--ah, nevermind.”)

They’re waiting, her and Marcy, while the Doc scoped around, Jennifer with the Doc’s coat thrown on for warmth, Marcy with her million layers and a pinched expression to her face. They’d ducked into the old salvation army store, poking around in the old books and toys, looking at things so futuristic sitting broken upon the shelves. No one seemed to care that they were holding hands, and she clung tighter.

“Hey, check it out Jennifer,” Marcy said, pulling her attention away from something that looks like a mixer. “Gray's Sports Almanac! Covers all sports games and matches from 1950-2000! If we took this back with us, we could be rich!” She sounded excited, almost manic, fingers brushing the dust jacket covetously.

Jennifer stared at her. “Marcy,” she said slowly, “you _are_ rich. Your mom is like the richest person in town.” Her girlfriend stared at her, blank and uncomprehending; unnerved, she rambled on, words spilling awkward from her mouth. “Marcy, you’re like, two steps from spoiled; my dad says it’s amazing that you aren’t, actually.”

“Jennifer, how did we meet?”

She frowned, not liking the non-sequitur. “We met at lunch, freshmen year. Your dad packed you like an eight course meal; you shared it with me, said a princess like me shouldn’t eat alone.

“Why, Marcy?”

Marcy was silent, not looking at her, fingers still dragging on the book. “I got jumped, on the way to lunch. Some of Geoffry’s friends, maybe, or just some punks, I never actually found out. I’d just started cutting my hair short, and I think I got called ‘dyke’ more than my own fucking name for the first few months, even from my family. I was sulking at a table off to the side, my eye already swelling, getting blood all over my lunch. Stale PB&J, because my mom was too busy to remember to go grocery shopping and my dad too drunk. Nothing too special. I never knew why someone like you would come sit with me, let alone stay after I snapped at you. You stayed, and treated me like anyone else, gave me half of your mom’s cupcakes because you thought I needed it.

“I don’t know how to be anything other than angry and poor,” she said, bitter, her hand fisting the air over the book. “I don’t remember the girl that you knew.”

Jennifer opened her mouth to say something, _would’ve_ said something, but the small rectangle Doc gave them blazed to life, ringing like a telephone, Doc’s grinning face flashing across the screen. “Hello?” she said, holding the thing to her ear, and didn’t so much as forget the conversation as put it aside to better focus on the task at hand (later, she would watch Marcy and the Doc have a near drag down fight across from the DeLorean, a familiar red book tossed across the silver hood like blood, Marcy bouncing on her toes like a boxer, and she wouldn’t even find it in her to be surprised).

They split up, Marcy to run interference with Billie’s son and his gang, Jennifer to head to their house and find the goods her and _Marcy’s kids_ had stolen and get them to Doc to put in Griff’s car. She broke into her own future house, feeling like Uhura with her future communicator sticking onto her ear but glad for it, listening as Marcy taunted and led the newest Tannen gang around the centre of town while she searched under beds and inside closets, grabbing the nondescript backpacks in gloved hands. She almost made it back out when the front door crashed open, a much older and much angrier Marcy striding in, screaming at someone over the phone. “Well, so’s your mom!” Roaring, she tossed the fragile thing at the wall; up on the second story landing, Jennifer flinched when it exploded, a million pieces flying everywhere. Keeping an ear out for her Marcy (who was laughing like she was having the time of her life, far off swears just barely audible), Jennifer slunk along, watching as the elder Marcy stripped off her office clothes with angry, jerking movements, her left hand held awkward and stiff beside her, more claw than hand.

“Marcy?” someone said deeper in the house, catching both elder Marcy’s attention as well as her own. An older Jennifer came out, wiping paint from her hands onto an old wash cloth. Jennifer boggled, gobsmacked by her elder self as she confronted Marcy, clearly well practised at dealing with this angry woman, letting her shout herself out until, broken, she asked, “Why do you stay with me, Jennifer?” and she answered, simple and sweet, “Because I love you, McFly.”

They moved further into the house and away from the front door, her older self massaging elder Marcy’s hand, talking out their options in low voices until Jennifer couldn’t hear them any more.

“Jennifer, do you have the stolen goods?” Doc’s voice chimed in her ear, pulling her back to the task at hand and away from this glimpse into her (their) future.

“Uh, yes, Doc, I have them.”

“Good! I’ll meet you at the corner in two minutes; Marcy, try to keep them occupied for another ten minutes, okay?”

“Roger that, Doc!” her Marcy shouted, and as Jennifer snuck back out, she took one last look over her shoulder at her future, taking in the modest home with the family portraits on the walls, with what had to be her and Marcy’s wedding photo, taken while they were both older, their adoptive children acting as their best man and maid of honour, both of their parents flanking them at the altar, and she felt steadier than she had since she stood in her girlfriend’s driveway, looking at a girl who looked back at her like a stranger. No matter what, they would get through this.

(What she regretted, later, staring out at this war-zone that had become their home, was not keeping an eye out while the Doc and Marcy fought, for not making sure no one was lurking in the shadows instead of pressing herself against the wall like she could hide if she tried hard enough; she regretted it when she stared down Tiff Tannen, business mogul and mob boss and _murderer_ , her shoulders damn near wrenched back as she screamed for Marcy to just _go_ , that she would meet her at home, she promised, and she held onto that even as Tiff’s goons beat her bloody and left her to choke on her own stoop because she knew that Marcy would _fix this_ , knew it with her whole fucking heart, and she passed out believing it.)

She woke to a hand in her hair, to lips pressing dusty and light to hers, and she flung herself up at her girlfriend, not caring that anyone could see, that her parents were in all likelihood just inside, just clung to her girlfriend with hands that were unbroken and a mouth that was bloodless. Pulling back for more than a second, she took in the dirt-encrusted canvas and leathers, the cowboy hat and the Eastwood poncho; the sun bleached hair and the wrinkled and tanned skin. “Christ, Marcy, how long have you been gone?”

“Spent a day in ‘55, avoiding my past self and chasing Tiff all over, then two months in 1885 while the Doc fixed the DeLorean and came up with a plan to get us back to the future,” Marcy told her, unable to stop kissing her, stop touching her, desperate and wound. “Are you okay? Did Tiff do anything to you? I’m so fucking sorry, Jennifer, I really am.”

“I’m okay,” she told her, pushing aside the feeling of burly fists on skin, the phantom taste of blood down her throat. “I’m okay,” she said, and it wasn’t even a lie, not really, because it all happened in another time to another Jennifer. When her parents caught them, railing and yelling, she couldn’t even bring herself to care, hand held tight in Marcy’s as she waited it out; she walked with Marcy back to Marcy’s house, her things shoved hastily into the backpack slung over her shoulders and the giant duffel held between them, swinging as Marcy told her about her adventures, disowned and free. The McFlys took her in, Mister McFly with a bracing pat to the back as Missus McFly tiraded about how homophobia was illogical and stupid, Flynn taking her bags with a sympathetic smile as D mused about how best to tank her parents 401ks. It was an outpouring of support she had not expected; one that Marcy hadn’t, either, looking at her family cagily until they managed to slip away, Marcy perched in the driver’s seat of her massive Toyota, stroking it as covetously as she had Jennifer earlier (as she had that book; _“I don’t know how to be anything other than angry and poor,”_ and Jennifer could see that, suddenly, her yearning and shock so new and strange from the cocky woman she had known). They drove to the tracks with the windows down, trying to see what of their memories meshed (and there were more than she’d expected, Marcy’s new memories apparently trickling in as time passed, but she was interested in her girlfriend’s old, interested to hear of a world where nothing had ever gone right and Marcy had learned to fight and run before anything else, a world where she never expected to amount to anything and took failure as granted though damned if she still wouldn’t _try_ ). When Billie and her gang pulled up beside them at the light, Needles riding shotgun while the rest hung like monkeys from the back, she had a sudden flash of foreboding as Billie challenged them to a race, as Marcy’s face went tight and bitter, and she _knew_ that this was how future Marcy had broke her hand. “Marcy,” she tried to say, a hand hovering uselessly in the air between them as the engines revved. “Don’t--”

“It’s okay, Jennifer,” Marcy told her, baring her teeth, a grin in only the loosest sense. “I’ve got this.”

The light changed, and Marcy revved the engine in neutral as Billie bucked ahead, screaming down the quarter-mile stretch until they nearly collided into a white Rolls Royce that pulled out right where her and Marcy would’ve been, Marcy laughing hysterically while the owner jumped out and raced Billie down, waving a golf club and shattering the rear tail light, hollering all the way. “How--”

“She’s an _asshole_ ,” Marcy interrupted her, voice full of hysterical wonder. “Why the _fuck_ should I care what she thinks? She’s not even like _half_ as smart as Tiff, and I don’t fucking listen to her, either!” As she drove away, still cackling, Jennifer thought about their future selves, about the anger and bitterness seeping into their home, thought about the life Marcy remembered compared to this apparently new, better one, and appreciated the fact that their future--that _everyone’s_ future--was mutable.

(When they got back home, high off of seeing the Doc and Clara and their flying Time Train, they hid out in the relative privacy of the garage, Marcy being almost frustratingly chaste as they made out in the bed of the truck because in the timeline she had come from they had been _virgins_ , unable to ever find the privacy or the space to do anything other than kissing with little above the waist action, and Jennifer took no small delight in showing her girlfriend what she’d shown her, six months ago in a private hotel room, watching as her tightly-wound body shook apart when she came with a startled gasp, hazel eyes flying open, blunt nails biting deep on Jennifer’s arm; they’d nearly missed the keys, tucked just above the door to the rest of the house until they'd fallen onto Marcy's head, a small pewter train tinkling merrily against the DeLorean’s starter, the address for a house a block away engraved on the bottom, and she and Marcy beamed at each other, all of time at their disposal. “Where to?” Marcy asked into her mouth, so sweet; “Whenever we wish,” Jennifer told her back, and led her back to their room because time? could wait.)

**Author's Note:**

> This literally started because I got the mental image of 'Georgia McFly' in a tree with cats-eye glasses and ruffled socks spying on kinda-hot Lawrence Baines and was immediately like, I would read the _fuck_ outta that. And then I wrote out a character sheet at work. And then I wanted Jennifer to actually DO things. And then I thought about how divergent timelines would really fuck a body up. AND THEN THIS HAPPENED.
> 
> There will probably be more at some point.


End file.
